


An Uneasy Peace

by rain_sleet_snow



Category: Old Kingdom - Garth Nix
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Charter Magic, Corruption, Gen, POV Outsider, Permanent Injury, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rebuilding, Shippy Gen, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-17
Updated: 2018-01-17
Packaged: 2019-03-06 05:23:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13404369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: A year after the accession of King Touchstone I, the headwoman of a village maimed by the Dead meets a Bridgemaster's Second at Navis market, and hears the bells ring for the birth of an heir.





	An Uneasy Peace

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cesy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cesy/gifts).



> For Cesy, in Fandom Loves Puerto Rico. You asked for rebuilding and the details of daily life in Touchstone's early reign - I hope you enjoy my take on it!
> 
> With copious thanks to incognitajones for a thoughtful beta.

The bells were ringing when Yira and Omar bumped into Navis on the cart, which made them both start with fear until they realised that the bells were ringing a joyous peal instead of the Navis militia's alarm call. Omar looked up at the bell towers in surprise and dropped the reins, which Daisy took as her cue to shy.

 

In fairness, Yira thought, seizing the reins before Daisy could do any damage to the other traffic streaming towards Navis for market day, the mare would shy at most things. Yira couldn't even blame her; since the spring melt had barely begun, the only viable route to Navis lay through deserted Rocksjaw village, which still smelled of Death and the sick chill of the broken Charter stone. There were probably no Dead left in the broken buildings of Rocksjaw, but it didn't pay to take chances, and Daisy was plainly sensible enough to know that. It had been a nerve-wracking day for a more than usually nervous member of a nervous species.

 

Some people at the Navis spring market might have dared to start out in the middle of the night. It had been a comparatively quiet winter, and the spring melt would be growing fierce in some places; with friendly terrain and plenty of Charter mages, a large group might expect to arrive safely. Yira, Omar and Daisy had started an hour before first light, and had been escorted for the first mile by all the remaining fit and healthy adults of the village, bearing burning torches. Even then, Yira's heart had beaten furiously in her throat until full dawn broke over them.

 

But they couldn't have started any later.

 

"Go and get our spot," Yira instructed, hanging onto the reins when Omar went to take them back. She cast an experienced eye over the traffic and shook her head. "Otherwise all the space'll be gone by the time we get there."

 

Omar nodded and slipped down from the cart. He was fifteen; young enough that he had only vague memories of authority besides Yira in the village, and old enough to remember the first hungry winter they'd spent on the island, after the breaking of the Charter stone and the destruction of their home on shore. He did what she said without question, mostly, and Yira was nearly as grateful for that as she was for his silver tongue and salesman's instincts. He would get a far better price than she would for the smoked and cured fish they'd brought on their heavily-laden cart, and he would do it while obeying her orders.

 

Once, Rocksjaw had sent a full party of villagers and several carts to the market, piled not just with fish, but with tightly-woven sails, woollen goods and the proceeds of a long winter indoors. Yira could remember tagging along with those cartloads; she'd been younger than Omar.

 

Yira took her right hand off the reins and flexed it absently, feeling the scarred skin pull as she steered Daisy and the fish-cart through an arch to the wide grassy Fishmarket. There was a distinct air of celebration, though Yira wasn't sure what for. Coloured banners and streamers, making up for the seasonal absence of flowers, were flying at the arches and on some of the more established stalls around the market: Navis people, shallow-water fishers, and always first with the news - at least, once it had leaked beyond the Bridge Company's well-fortified walls. There was nobody this far north, noble or commoner, fisher or landsman, who was better informed than the Company. Not unless you included the Daughters of the Clayr, and they were too uncanny to count.

 

Yira wouldn't say that she'd set out to find a contact among the Company the first time she'd come to the market as village headwoman - too young, too nervous and too defensive, and all Rocksjaw had left to lead them. But befriending Talan was probably the most useful thing she'd managed to do at that market, given that even the fish had sold too low. All anyone had wanted was to hear about the tragedy, and she hadn't been skilled enough to leverage pity for profits.

 

Yira shoved away the memories in order to focus on Omar, who was jumping up and down waving his arms, in case Yira might not have seen him from less than twenty feet away. Yira did not roll her eyes, on the grounds that it was unworthy of her position. That also meant that she would have to wait until she got away from the Fishmarket to show her ignorance by asking the news, which she couldn't readily guess.

 

You couldn't reasonably expect a king to conduct a miraculous return to the throne twice in as many years, after all.

 

"It's the anniversary," Omar said confidently, when Yira reached him and reined Daisy in. "The anniversary of the king, I mean." He was bouncing on his toes, for which Yira forgave him; she knew that for all he acted like a skittish boy now, he would settle down when it came to it.

 

"I thought that was a couple of months ago," Yira said, unhitching Daisy and tethering her loosely at a slight distance from the cart.

 

Omar frowned. "Maybe it's a royal wedding?"

 

"I heard he was already married."

 

Yira had been told that the Daughters of the Clayr had married King Touchstone to the current Abhorsen, which struck her as just as unlikely as most elements of the story about him. The King, if he really was married to the Abhorsen, might as well have been handfast over the Wall itself.  That would really have set the seal on the tale.

 

Also, why the _Abhorsen_? Had she really woken him from a century's sleep?

 

Omar shrugged unhelpfully. "Ask your friend at the Bridge Company. Talon, or whatever his name is."

 

"Talan," Yira said, a little too quickly, as she chained the strongbox to a cart wheel and wound the other wheels round with more chains. "It's Talan."

 

Omar grinned in a way that made Yira bite back sharp words. She should never have allowed him to accompany her into Navis so often; it was inevitable that he'd see her with Talan, and he always jumped to conclusions. And she should have lied when people asked her about the unusually large volume of letters she was writing over the winter.

 

She scowled at the boy, tugging at the canopy over their stall so it fell properly. "Get a good price, Omar."

 

"Always," Omar said cheerfully.

 

 

Yira strode purposefully away from the stall, nodding to and exchanging greetings with the men and women she knew, stopping to chat with a few who hailed her for a longer conversation. They asked after her winter, and she returned the favour. They had news to give her of surrounding towns and villages, and even some of Belisaere, but that was all second-hand; none of the Belisaere fishers sailed so far north of the Sea of Saere, and any merchant sailors bringing goods north would be in the taverns by now.

 

The sea wall at the edge of the Fishmarket had been remade, she noticed, and the iron gate to the docks shone with fresher Charter marks than she had seen for some time. Maybe Navis town had rediscovered some money behind the mayor's desk. Or maybe the Bridge Company were sprucing the place up again.

 

Yira walked back through the arches and turned to ambling less purposefully, moving further from the Fishmarket. If she wanted information, it didn't pay to be striding around. People charged harder if they knew they had something you needed.

 

The city really did have a festival air, Yira observed. Someone had dug out spruce branches from Midwinter and made them look like they weren't dead yet; someone else had put up a paper lantern with glowing silhouettes of famous parts of the Old Kingdom, and elaborately cut names. _King Touchstone_ stood proud among the tines of a crown, glowing with red and the faintest hint of gold; _Abhorsen Sabriel_ made do with a cooler blue, and in the centre a purple lantern wore a crown. Had they crowned her Queen in her own right, then? The print shop had taken advantage of superior information to cover half of their entire front window in a scene, but Yira couldn't make out what it was meant to be telling her. Whoever had done the cutting, probably an apprentice, had lavished more time and attention on the spires and towers of the Palace, and assorted geographical locations in the Kingdom, than they had on the people.

 

Yira rubbed absently at the unnaturally pearly, gnarled skin of her right palm and frowned up at the Bridge Company bell tower, which happened to be nearest. The bells were still going, bright and cheerful, and her hand was itching, the tight skin pulling over flesh and muscle beneath. There was no feeling where her thumb pressed over the dip of her palm, but her hand itched nonetheless.

 

It was maddening.

 

"Yira!" called a familiar voice, and a reluctant smile eased over Yira's face, slowly displacing the frown. She let her hands fall, and turned to face Talan, jogging out of the Bridge Company gate.

 

He didn't look any different. Yira checked after every winter, and every short summer holiday that he spent further south than Yira ever meant to go. Their meetings at these times were usually short, curtailed by the flood of duties taken up once more or Talan's plans to travel south to his family at High Bridge, but necessity had taught Yira to make rapid judgements. No new scars, and no limp or awkwardness in the way he held himself; no weight loss, or shadows under his eyes beyond those normal to a Bridgemaster's Second being run into the ground.

 

Yira let relief run through her, and did not think about what he might see, looking at her.

 

"Well met," she said, and clasped his shoulders as his arm went around hers. He was warm enough for it to be very pleasant: Yira chalked that up to a heavy wool cloak and a certain furnace-like quality.

 

"How's the village?" he said.

 

"Same as always," she said. "How's the Bridge?"

 

"Same as always," he replied. He smiled, and the scar at the corner of his mouth twisted it: crooked and good-natured. "Save for a visit from the king. It was after the last post went, or I'd have written to you about it."

 

"Does that explain the celebrations?" Yira said, and glared up at the tower. "And the bells?"

 

"No, that would be the princess," Talan said. "Are the bells bothering you?"

 

"Yes. What princess? They've only been married -"

 

"A year," Talan said, laughing at her even as he steered her away from the bells towards the waterfront, where the breakers on the sea wall could drown out the music. "And you no longer have to be born within wedlock to inherit the throne, anyway. That old law went out the window when King Touchstone came in the door."

 

"Oh," Yira said, twitching as a new peal started, and trying not to think of alarm calls, or tunes that made you dance when you ought to lie still, like Auri -

 

The scar on Yira's palm itched and itched.

 

"That's nice," Yira said, stuffing her hands into her pockets so she couldn't scratch a layer of skin off. "Congratulations to them. Good to have an heir. Does she have a name?"

 

"Ellimere," Talan said, stopping at a stall that sold hot thick spiced chocolate and little deep-fried pastries - treats from far overseas, and correspondingly expensive. "There's real news for you. The Chief of the Company got a message-hawk from the Clayr's Glacier announcing the name this morning; she must have been Charter-baptised last night."

 

"Princess Ellimere," Yira said experimentally, rolling the name around her tongue. "It sounds... right," she said, with a note of approbation that surprised her. The King and the Abhorsen weren't her concern, and she was sure they would be the first to say so.

 

"They're granting boons in her name," Talan said, eyeing the food stall. "One hundred, across the Kingdom. Anyone can ask."

 

"That's nice." Yira saw Talan pointing to two rough ceramic mugs and the tub of fresh pastries and reaching for his pocket. "Talan!"

 

"I said I owed you a drink if you managed ten whole letters this winter," Talan protested, hand loosening. "It's too early for beer."

 

Yira blinked at him. She remembered making the bet - that was right, fewer than ten letters and she would have owed him a waterproofing spell for his gear - but she didn't remember winning it. It had been a busy winter. She'd started out counting letters, and then she'd got too tired and scared and preoccupied and had simply written, for all the pain in her hand and the resulting crabbed, smudged, scrawling letters. She didn't think she'd even bothered re-reading them after the first one, spelling mistakes, and clumsy sentences be damned. It wasn't as if there was enough paper for her to write a fair copy, and she no longer felt she had to speak carefully to Talan.

 

In any case, it would have been too painful for her to rewrite the letters. Every time she picked up a pen or glanced at her handwriting she she considered trying to learn to write with her left hand, and then she had to settle a dispute or patch a roof or organise a working party to weave new sails, and she remembered how much else there was to do.

 

Yira's mother had been proud of Yira's handwriting, once. Notary-perfect, she'd said. And she'd been the only magistrate for miles around; she would have known...

 

"I forgot," Yira said eventually, flexing her right hand as far as it would go. "How many did I write, then?"

 

"Thirteen," Talan said. "Can I buy you a drink now?"

 

Yira nodded, and watched as he haggled over the price of the drinks and a handful of pastries, tipped into a greasy paper cone.

 

"It was a hard winter, I think," Talan said, as they walked away from the stall and towards the city's centre docks, further from the bell towers. "From your letters."

 

His had been funny, Yira recalled, thinking of the letters she had collected regularly from Bridge Company House in Navis. As witty and open as Talan himself. He had not skated over the skirmishes and threats, but he had made them seem less important than an accident involving an unsatisfactory cauldron of custard.

 

"Not really," Yira said. "I just told you more." She sipped at the chocolate. "Everything I thought could go in a letter."

 

Talan cast her a sideways look. "Lord Ulliver," he said.

 

Yira ate a pastry, crunching through the thin crispy shell to the sweet dough beneath. Talan knew only part of the truth regarding Rocksjaw's problems with its liege-lord, but thanks to her newly unguarded correspondence, he knew a larger part than he ever had done before. There were times when it didn't pay to talk.

 

Careful consideration suggested that this was probably not one of them.

 

"There's a nice seat over there," she said at last.

 

Talan looked where she was looking. "Lovely," he said, with enthusiasm. The scar at the corner of his mouth twitched as he suppressed a smile, and Yira had to flatten her own mouth into obedience. "Scenic."

 

The seat in question was a stone bench sufficiently far out on the sea wall sheltering the harbour that freezing spray was occasionally flung over it, and no boat was moored near it. No-one else would be able to hear them without coming close enough to arouse suspicion.

 

"I love the sea," Yira said, perfectly truthfully, and led the way.

 

Talan didn't try to sugar-coat his thinking when they sat down. "How much do you owe Lord Ulliver?"

 

"Including the levies? Nine gold deniers, as of yesterday," Yira said. "Elisel had her baby."

 

"And Ulliver charged you both for the healer and the baptism." Talan bit into a pastry with unusual violence.

 

"Of course." Yira closed her eyes. "He waived most of the healer's fee. As a - gesture. A gift for the first day of spring." Yira felt her lips draw back over her teeth. "Charity."

 

"He doesn't charge much interest?"

 

"Very little," Yira said bitterly. "As long as we have no Charter stone, he doesn't need to." She slurped at her chocolate. "He's offered to accept payment in kind, but we haven't made enough for that since - since before we retreated to the island."

 

"You've been petitioning for a new one for how long?"

 

"Five years. Five and a half." Yira set her cup down too hard, and then winced and picked it up to check it hadn't cracked. "Since the - since the first time we got off the island. After. We went to Lord Ulliver..."

 

Her hand hurt. She made an ugly noise, and grabbed at it with her other hand, wringing it fiercely like that would make the feeling stop.

 

"Here," Talan said, level enough, but just a little too quick to pretend he wasn't worried.

 

She laid her right hand in his, the palm opening and closing in spasms. Talan took her wrist firmly in his hand, and she sat on her left hand so she couldn't scratch, pressing it into the rough stone beneath her.

 

Talan was casting a spell for pain relief. He had taught it to her, but Yira had never been good with Charter Magic besides the weather, and healing was particularly difficult. It was also hard for her to cast left-handed, and - as Talan had seen in one of their earliest meetings - her right hand had lost just enough of its flexibility to make casting dangerous.

 

 Talan was good at it, but all the Bridgemaster’s Seconds were expected to be reasonably skilled Charter mages.

 

Yira stared out to sea.

 

_If the Dead do walk, seek water's run, for this the Dead will always shun._

Hurriedly, she slammed her eyes shut, but it was useless.

 

 _If water fails thee, fire's thy friend; if neither guards_ -

 

"Yira?"

 

On the backs of Yira's eyelids her dead brother reached for her throat with hands not yet ruined by the grave, hands that had already broken their mother's neck; and in her memories Yira herself pushed a burning brand deep into his shattered chest, and in her ears a scream that still sounded too much like Auri drowned out even the bells and the sea - but not Talan's voice.

 

"Thank you," Yira said belatedly. "Sorry - thank you."

 

She took her hand away and picked up her chocolate with it, very carefully. Her fingers were trembling.

 

"You could come to Navis," Talan said. "Use one of the Stones here. The priests at the Chapel of the Sea or the nuns in the Painted Tower would help you, for free - or at least, more cheaply."

 

Yira took a deep breath. "Lord Ulliver is our liege-lord. And closer. And has been very... understanding, in the matter of the unpaid levies. He recognises... that many of our people are - gone. One way or another." She stared at the ground. "And that we cannot go anywhere freely, except out to sea. And that with no Charter stone, we can't heal our village, or draw new people, or - or build. Again."

 

"The discount on the levies -"

 

"Conditional," Yira said quickly, and almost choked on her words. She glanced at Talan, caught a flash of fury in those grey southerner's eyes, and looked away at once. "The accumulated... charges... are being saved. Against the day when we can answer to our responsibilities once more."

 

"Interest?" Talan said, cool and hard.

 

Yira jerked her head no. "It's the same as the Charter stone. No Charter stone, no rebuilding. No rebuilding, we can't pay our full levy. The debt just keeps building. He doesn't _need_ to charge interest." She choked a laugh. Her throat was burning. "The levy pays for his militia, who - who guard the country, against the Dead."

 

Talan's hand rested lightly over her good one. She turned it over and squeezed his fingers so fiercely she was sure it must hurt - her left hand was far stronger than it had been, her grip now crushing - but Talan didn't say a word.

 

"He controls the nearest Charter stone, and the healer," she said. "He can charge us for that. He holds our levy licence, and can discount that... but he can also hold it over our heads forever." Yira coughed, a sharp bark of suppressed grief and anger. "And because, by right of his holdings, he became the local magistrate when my mother died, he's also the only way we can petition _anyone_ for a mended Charter stone."

 

Talan's fingers curled tight around her own. "Have you found a mage who can mend it?"

 

"Not yet," Yira said, and took a deep, steadying breath. "Not yet. But they must exist." She inhaled again, slow and deliberate, and exhaled equally decisively. "There were mages who could mend the stones in the Regent's service, when there was a Regent. That was only twenty years ago. And if things are to be cleaned up, all around the Kingdom, those mages will be needed."

 

"I'll ask again," Talan said, "when I go home. South. Maybe there's someone at the university I haven't found yet."

 

"We'd still have to pay them," Yira pointed out. "And the only way of doing that that I can see is taking a loan." She snorted. "I'd like to see the notary that would secure a loan on Rocksjaw. What's left of us."

 

She finished her chocolate and ate the last-but-one of the cooling pastries, then tossed the last one neatly into Talan's open mouth.

 

"Bullseye," Talan said, rather muffled, and she gave a short, reluctant laugh. He chewed and swallowed. "You did that left-handed. Nice work."

 

"I’ve been practising," Yira said. She sighed, and held out an arm to him.

 

Talan wrapped his arm around her shoulders and leaned in close. She let herself lean into him, and frowned when he flinched - just as her weight pressed into his ribs, she judged.

 

" _What_ ," Yira said dangerously. "Talan!"

 

"They're only cracked," Talan said hurriedly, "And the healer fixed them up, they don't hurt unless -"

 

"Unless I lean on them." Yira sighed again, and shifted her weight so that she could press close to him without imperilling his rib cage. "You should have told me!"

 

"I meant to! But it's a small thing. And everyone expects you to fix everything; I didn't want you to have to worry about _me,_ too."

 

"I don't mind worrying about you." Yira rested her head against his shoulder. "I mean, you're a delicate southerner. Charter knows what kind of trouble you could get into all the way up here."

 

"You sound like my mother," Talan said mildly. His cheek pressed against the top of her head, and she felt him exhale, soft and weary. He was always cheerful just after the Winter Shift had ended, but he was also exhausted.

 

 Yira allowed herself to be annoyed with the Bridge Company for tiring him.

 

"Bandits?" Yira said. "Clans?"

 

"Good question," Talan said. "Too far south for clans, and funny-looking for bandits, and they ran from us. The Bridgemaster thinks they were looking for the king, but they didn't find him." Talan shifted and settled a bit. "Anyway, King Touchstone can handle himself in a fight."

 

"You're impressed," Yira said, surprised. "You liked him."

 

"I liked him," Talan said. "He seemed..." He hesitated. "He seemed like he could make things happen, Yira. Like he meant to make things happen. He said they'd scour the Kingdom clean and build it back up -"

 

"My mother told me every Regent has said that for the last forty years," Yira objected.

 

"Yes, but I _believe_ him."

 

There was a silence broken only by the crashing of the waves, and the rolling of the bells. Yira didn't have to try to push either away.

 

"Well then," she said softly. "That means something."

 

Talan chuckled, low and pleased, but said nothing; Yira smiled.

 

"Those boons," she said after a while. "Maybe one of them is big enough for a broken Charter-stone. Do you think it's worth trying?"

 

"Yes," Talan said. "I do."

 


End file.
